Saturday, 10 August 2013

Note to self: take notice of the artist behind the post-it note

Back in July my daughter and I made a pilgrimage to
Bermondsey to see the White Cube which we’d heard so much about for so
long. We had high expectations as our
gps guided us from the tube through the back streets of east London. The cube, however, was closed. So we decided to visit its sister space in
the West End. On display was the work of
Brazilian-born conceptual artist, Jac Leirner.
Now my daughter, the artist, feels strongly that art should be able to speak for itself - that we should be able to ascertain whether it is either good or bad based soley on what we see before us. I used to think that,
but have found that when I know the artist’s back story, it often increases the
contemplative possibilities of viewing for me.

In the one of the galleries were some pieces which looked to
us like a sets of different coloured post-it notes, arranged in a large rectangles
with military precision. We looked at
one another in despair, feeling as though we were being humiliated by the
artist. I later learned that these weren’t
post-it notes at all but rather gummed Rizla papers and that Ms. Leiner, one of
Latin America’s leading conceptual artists, has an obsession with accumulating
ordinary found objects as materials for her art. Her works, or 'interventions' adopt ‘formal
rigour and aesthetic to the way she collects, arranges and assembles.' Her cigarette paper grid titled Skin “references both the habitual, repetitive activity of rolling papers and the
physical, tangible nature of this material: a delicate and translucent syphon
used to smoke tobacco and pot.”

Leirner follows in a long tradition of ‘found object’
artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Gabriel Orozco and
Picasso. Last year I was able to hear David Nash speak about his work at a lecture
he gave at Kew Gardens. Like
Leiner, Nash mostly uses found materials,
only his have been from nature – predominantly fallen trees. Unlike Leiner, however, his works are
monumental and designed to last, particularly in the elements.

On another cultural excursion off the Piccadilly line, we
saw the brilliant BP exhibition of young artists at the National Portrait
Gallery. The works were truly impressive
and mesmerising; we even went around twice it was so good.

And then we ventured down into the crypt of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields. It’s now like
Victoria Station down there now, with a huge cafe, gift shop, throngs of diners
and tourists and an art gallery off to the west side. When we entered the space we noticed that
several walls were covered with yellow post-it note and we responded, quite
appropriately and spontaneously, in gales of laughter. A young man explained to us that for £10 we
could purchase the chance to remove one of the post-it notes and have one of
several of his colleagues sketch and sign a doodle on the note for us to take
home. Eventually, when all the notes
were removed, there would be a grand work for all to see. Now I’m sure that these were all fantastically
talented artists and that they were undertaking a novel approach to
participative art; it just seemed like a pretty high price for which to take part.

I told the pop-up artist about the exhibit at the White Cube
and encouraged him to go see it; after all, it seemed like there was some
symmetry there.